Profile: Mediterranean Diet

Your lifestyle: Cooking is something you're familiar with. As the head of the family, you're the one who prepares meals, does the food shopping and decides what's for dinner.

Your day-to-day menus usually revolve around your children's tastes, be it fish fingers and chips or anything they can put chocolate spread on.

Your dietary profile: You struggle to appreciate boiled or steamed veg when your kids are munching on ketchup-covered chips in front of you.

Likewise, you're easily tempted by the contents of the biscuit tin when the kids dive into it, and you drink a lot of coffee to keep pace with everything.

Your goal: To lose a few pounds without ruining your life or that of your family. You want to slim down a bit but you refuse to deprive your children. You'd llike to teach them to appreciate a healthy, filling and varied diet.

The diet for you: The Mediterranean Diet. Inspired by the eating habits of individuals from different areas of the Mediterranean region (specifically Crete, Greece and southern Italy), it's based on a healthier way of eating.

According to numerous scientific studies, people from Crete have a lower risk of coronary heart disease, cancer and chronic diseases than people from most other countries in the world.

Their secret? A diet that's low in fat and sugar but high in dried fruit, vegetables and fish.

What does this diet involve?Composed of vegetables and olive oil, it allows you to lose weight while adopting a varied cuisine that's full of flavour.

"This diet requires you to have time for cooking. It's based on raw and cooked vegetables," explains nutritionist Béatrice de Reynal. Spices, colours, exotic products... you can lose weight without depriving yourself.

You just need to cook the same thing for all the family and simply reduce the size of your own portion.

And so that your children don't become frustrated, let them have what they want in terms of bread, dairy products and desserts!